The manuscript of Shostakovich’s Three Pieces for cello and piano is lost, according to Laurel Fay and others. She says that he initially composed four pieces but immediately destroyed the last, reducing the count to three. At any rate, it’s down to zero now.

The manuscript of Shostakovich’s Opus 2, his Eight Preludes for piano, is lost, so here there is nothing to listen to.

It seems that at least some of Shostakovich’s Five Preludes for piano from the same time period (no opus number assigned) were extracted from the Opus 2 set. Richard Whitehouse’s booklet essay for Konstantin Scherbakov’s CD release of the Five Preludes (Naxos 8.570092) states that all five were taken from the Eight Preludes, although a note in the track listing claims that only some were, without specifying which ones.* At any rate, I’ll consider the Five Preludes as their own work, later this week.

* Update, August 25, 2010: Factual errors already! The CD booklet’s track listing does in fact state that all but the E minor prelude derive from Op. 2.